Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies was a directory of prostitutes including their addresses and rates which was published yearly between 1757 and 1795, principally examining the upper end of the market. While it was far from being the first catalogue of London prostitutes, it became one of the most notorious and was certainly the longest running. The first version of Harris’s List was probably authored by the struggling poet, hack writer and actor Samuel Derrick. The ‘Harris’ of its title was an infamous pimp, Jack Harris (or John Harrison), who operated from the Shakespear’s Head Tavern in Covent Garden and kept a handwritten compendium of names and addresses on which the first printed List was probably based.1 The list became an enormously successful franchise, surviving Derrick’s death in 1769 and passing through a series of hands disguised behind the pseudonym H. Ranger.